P H O N E T I C S:

STRESS AND RHYTHM

Phonetics and Phonology – English

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Tamara Carolina Oorts Díaz

January 2013

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction …………………………………………………………………………..... 2

1 Theory

1.1 Stress ………………………..…………………………………………………….... 3

1.1.1 Contrastive Vowel Stress …………………………………………………….. 4

1.1.2 Contrastive Vowel Clarity …………………………………………………….. 5

1.1.3 Pitch Changes ……….………………………………………………...………. 6

1.2 Rhythm ……………………….…………………………………………………..… 8

2 Practice

2.1 Kinesthetic Exercises ……………………………………………………….…10

2.2 Stress Errors ……………..……………………………………………………...11

2.3 Schwa Hunt ……………….…………………………………………………….. 12

2.4 Dialogue Reading ……………………………………………………………… 13

3 Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………. 16

4 Bibliography and References ………………………………………………... 16

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INTRODUCTION

Speaking a language goes beyond merely mastering grammar and vocabulary,

also requiring a correct pronunciation to be able to communicate properly.

Teaching pronunciation, however, can be certainly challenging. For starters,

teachers seldom have enough time in class to give the necessary attention this

aspect of English teaching needs. And when they finally find the time to do so,

they find themselves caught in a circle of presentation and practice of never ending

series of repetitious sounds which seldom offers encouraging results. On the

contrary, discouraged students and teachers end up wanting to avoid

pronunciation and forget about the whole thing altogether.

Teachers have to take into account that there also are different psychological

factors that affect how students learn pronunciation that are entirely different from

those present when students are studying grammar or vocabulary. It is important

not to forget that the most basic elements of speaking are usually deeply personal,

and that sense of self and community is intrinsically connected to the speech-

rhythms of first language (L1). These rhythms were the same ones learned in the

first year of life and are deeply rooted in students’ minds. It is not uncommon, then,

that students present conflicted feelings when they hear themselves speak with the

rhythm of a second language (L2).

The way to overcome this and other psychological barriers is to stop thinking of

pronunciation instruction as helping students to sound like native speakers, and to

start considering that, by helping them learn main elements of spoken English,

they can then be easily understood by others. This way, all frustration, difficulties,

and boredom associated with pronunciation is eliminated by placing attention on

the development of pronunciation practice and instruction that is more accessible

to the listener.

Teachers need to keep in mind that English pronunciation is not equal to

mastering lists of sounds or isolated words, but rather that it is a learning and

practicing process that shows how to make a speaker’s thoughts easy to follow in

an L2, by means of a reasonably intelligible pronunciation. (Celce-Murcia, 1987;

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Anderson-Hsieh, 1989), as it is considered essential for the learner to increase

self-confidence and promote social interactions outside the classroom (Morley,

1991; Cunningham Florez, 1998).

DEFINITION

Stress, also referred to as accent, is the relative emphasis that may be given to

certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence, and which

is highly language-dependent. (Brown 1990; Celce-Murcia 1996; Morley 1991)

Stressed syllables can follow one or several of the following patterns:

a higher or lower pitch than non-stressed syllables (pitch accent)

a higher or a lower pitch in comparison with the surrounding syllables (pitch

excursion)

dynamic accents (loudness)

qualitative accents (place or manner of articulation, such as reduction)

quantitative accent (length).

Stress may be realized to varying degrees on different words in a sentence;

presenting a minimal difference between the acoustic signals of stressed and

unstressed syllables. (Brown 1990; Celce-Murcia 1996; Morley 1991)

Thus, effectively communicating in also involves an ability to hear and

reproduce stress patterns of English. As Dr. Gillian Brown mentions in “Listening

to Spoken English” (1990: 51), English speakers tend to store vocabulary items

according to their stress patterns, which leads to a stress error being particularly

damaging to communication:

“The stress pattern of a polysyllabic word is a very important identifying

feature of the word . . . We store words under stress patterns . . . and we

find it difficult to interpret an utterance in which a word is pronounced with

the wrong stress pattern – we begin to “look up” possible words under this

wrong stress pattern.”

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Unfortunately, these stress patterns tend to be ignored during the vocabulary

learning process. This not only causes pronunciation problems but it can also lead

to comprehension ones: if learners fail to learn the stress pattern for a new word,

they may also fail to recognize that word when it occurs in spoken form. Brown

(1990: 52) explains it like this:

“From the point of view of the comprehension of spoken English, the

ability to identify stressed syllables and make intelligent guesses about

the content of the message from this information is absolutely essential.”

Students who aid themselves by checking the pronunciation of a word on the

dictionary would be wise to keep in mind that the word stress pattern indicated

there is a “potential” one that works in certain specific contexts, but not necessarily

in every possible context. Brown (1977: 159) notes the following:

“From the point of view of understanding ordinary spoken English, the failure

to move beyond the basic elementary pronunciation of spoken English must

be regarded as disastrous for any student who wants to be able to cope with

a native English situation. If the student is only exposed to carefully

articulated English, he will have learnt to rely on acoustic signals which will

be denied him when he encounters the normal English of native speakers.”

When it comes to thought groups, stress plays an important role, as they need

to know which syllable in that word will be the peak syllable when the word is

chosen as the focus of a thought group. (Brown 1990; Celce-Murcia 1996; Morley

1991)

Identifying stress is done by using a combination of signals to make clear which

syllable is stressed:

Contrastive Vowel Length - refers to the perceived duration of the vowel at the

center of a syllable, which may vary in length for a number of reasons. Dalton and

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Seidlhofer (1994: 34) suggest the following decisive cues we should look for in the

perception of stress:

“Experiments with speakers of other languages have corroborated the

importance of pitch as a cue in the perception of stress, but they have also

shown that the relative weight of the factors involved is definitely language

specific. As far as English is concerned, for instance, the duration of

syllables seems to be a more important cue than in other languages.”

Brown (1990: 46) also identifies vowel length as a particularly important stress

signal in English:

“Any syllable which is markedly longer than the surrounding syllables will

also be perceived as stressed. From the point of view of teaching production

of stress, length is the variable that most students find easiest to control,

and is a reliable marker of stress.”

There are some languages that do not lengthen vowels, a factor which has a

significant impact on the ESL acquisition process. If the student’s L1 has a

characteristically variable duration of vowels, students may hear differences in

length very well, but they may fail to connect the difference in length with stress

because their own L1 uses length in different ways. (Brown 1990; Celce-Murcia

1996; Morley 1991)

Contrastive Vowel Clarity - In English, vowel reduction is the centralization and

weakening of an unstressed vowel, such as the characteristic change of many

vowels at the ends of words to schwa. In some words, unstressed vowels are

never reduced, while in others it is always reduced. More often than not, the extent

of reduction depends on how quickly or carefully the speaker enunciates the word.

Many English words alternate having unstressed vowels and reduced vowels,

depending on context. Bolinger (1989: 347) explains the differences between the

two types of vowels by stating that full vowels are distinguished by height,

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backness, and roundness, whereas reduced unstressed vowels are largely

unconcerned with height or roundness. And although their backness distinction is

not as great as that of full vowels, reduced vowels are also centralized, and are

sometimes referred to by that term. They may also be called obscure, as there is

no one-to-one correspondence between full and reduced vowels.

Phonetic reduction most often involves a centralization of the vowel by reducing

the amount of movement of the tongue while pronouncing it. The most common

type of reduction is the neutralization of acoustic distinctions in unstressed vowels,

and the most common reduced vowel is the schwa, /ə/, which is not only very

short, but has an unclear, obscured quality.

Most vowels have been reduced to schwa, making it the vowel sound most

commonly used in spoken English. Since it has no written symbol in non-phonetic

alphabets, it represents for students who have learned the language only in its

written form a serious obstacle in their listening comprehension. Students whose

L1 does not include vowel reduction find this particularly hard to understand,

making the challenge of learning to hear the difference between clear and reduced

vowels an essential task. (Brown 1990; Celce-Murcia 1996; Morley 1991)

Pitch Change – Pitch is the degree of height or depth of a tone or of sound,

depending upon the relative rapidity of the vibrations by which it is produced. It is

also a linguistic term of convenience for a variety of restricted tone systems that

use variations in pitch to give prominence to a syllable or more within a word. The

placement of this tone or the way it is realized can give different meanings to

otherwise similar words. (Brown 1990; Celce-Murcia 1996; Morley 1991)

Pitch accents in English serve as a cue to prominence, along with duration,

intensity, and spectral composition. They are made up of a high (H) or low (L) pitch

target or a combination of an H and an L target. It is believed that pitch accent

placement is tied to the focus, or most important part, of the phrase. That is, a

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major change in pitch on the stressed syllable of the word is used to highlight the

word in a sentence that is conveying the central meaning.

According to Celce-Murcia el al, American English pitch has four levels:

1) low - occurs at the end of utterances other than yes-no questions

2) middle - normal conversation

3) high - occurs at the end of yes-no questions

4) very high - strong emotion or emphasis

Pitch can also indicate attitude, ranging from weak emotion (with pitch starting

medium and dropping to low), to enthusiasm (with pitch starting very high and

ending low), to sarcasm (with pitch starting and remaining low).

All languages have one or more ways to show the difference between new and

old information, but English relies on intonation for this purpose more than most

other languages. When a word becomes the focus of meaning, the stressed

syllable of the word (known as the peak syllable) is marked by a major change in

pitch.

Cruttenden (1986: 80-89) uses the following examples

Did you have a good DAY?

I had a bloody HORRible day.

to point out that while the pitch change that marks the peak syllable in a thought

group is usually a rise pitch, it does not have to be, because each speaker has his

own natural baseline pitch for speaking, and uses variations from this baseline

(either up or down) in order to call attention to the focus word.

On the topic of pitch changes, Patel (2008: 234) makes the following

observation:

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“In intonation languages such as English (in which pitch does not

distinguish lexical items, as it does in tone languages), the direction of

the pitch change is seldom crucial to understanding. For example, if a

pitch movement is used to signal focus on a word, it may matter little

to a listener if the movement is upward or downward, as long as it is

salient and detectable.”

In English, pitch changes are the most important signal of new information, or

special importance (Bolinger 1986, 21). The stressed syllable is lengthened in

order to make the pitch change easier to hear. If there has been adequate practice

of recognizing lengthened syllables in previous course work, adding pitch should

be a manageable task at this point. However, unless students have been trained to

pay attention to the contrastive signal, they are apt to fail to notice it and therefore

miss the point. For that reason, students should be taught to listen for the acoustic

emphasis given to focus words. This helps them learn to listen “selectively,” rather

than giving equal attention to every word they hear.

RHYTHM

In spoken English, words with two or more syllables have different stress and

length patterns, where some syllables are stressed more than others and some

syllables are pronounced longer than others. Different words in the same sentence

have stronger stress and are pronounced longer whereas other words are weaker

and shorter. This pattern of strong and weak stress and short and long

pronunciation gives English its rhythm. It is important for non-native speakers to

understand and master the rhythm of English. If the wrong words are stressed in a

sentence, or if all words are pronounced with the same length or loudness, the

speech will be difficult to understand.

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According to Dauer in his Accurate English (1993:83), rhythm happens when

we speak naturally, because words are parts of phrases and longer sentences.

What we hear is a sequence of syllables in time, like notes in music. The time

relationships among syllables make up the rhythm of language.

Rhythm is, therefore, regarded as the timing patterns among syllables.

However, they are not the same in all languages. Pike (1945: 35) distinguished two

kinds of rhythm in languages:

Syllable-timed rhythm, where syllables tend to occur at regular intervals of

time and consequently all syllables tend to have the same length, such as

the Spanish and/or the French language.

Stressed-timed rhythm, where stressed syllables tend to occur at regular

intervals, meaning that the syllables might vary in length since there might

be a varying number of syllables between stresses.

In English, rhythm is organized into feet (Abercrombie 1964: 216-222). The foot

begins with the stressed syllable and includes all the unstressed syllables up to the

next stress where a new foot begins. This foot always begins with a stressed

syllable; consequently any unstressed syllable follows a stressed one within the

same foot. All unstressed syllables may therefore be described as post-accentual

(or postictic). If any utterance begins with an unstressed syllable, a silent stress is

posited.

Since stress and rhythm determine the pronunciation of consonants and vowels

many segmental problems can be avoided by practicing stress and rhythmic

exercises in the early stages of the learning process; Brown points out the

problems involved in practicing segmental aspects prior to practicing stress and

rhythm (1977: 51).

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In English, stresses occur at roughly regular intervals of time, and therefore all

feet tend to be of equal duration or isochronous. Since feet take roughly the same

amount of time to be produced and the number of syllables in a foot might vary, it

follows that the length of syllables must also vary. If a foot with, say, 4 syllables

takes the same amount of time to be pronounced as a foot with one syllable, then

each one of the four syllables must be shorter than the one.

Thus, if there are no intervening syllables between two stresses, the syllable

which stands alone in a foot will tend to be stretched in time. If there are a number

of intervening unstressed syllables, the stressed syllable will be made shorter, and

the unstressed syllables will be squeezed together between stresses and they will

suffer important phonetic reductions such as vowel weakening, elision,

assimilation, haplology, etc. (Abercrombie 1964; Crystal 1969)

Not all types of English speech are equally isochronous. The more organized

the speech, the more isochronous it will be. Thus, verse and nursery rhymes are

more isochronous than prose. And prose read aloud or formal speech is more

rhythmical than conversational speech. Thus, isochronicity seems to be a gradient

feature (Crystal 1969; Dauer 1993).

PRACTICE:

KINESTHETIC EXERCISES: Stretching wide, heavy, rubber bands while

practicing the lengthened vowels can provide students with a kinesthetic focusing

tool to reinforce the contrast in duration. Have students say the words below while

stretching a rubber band wide when saying the stressed syllable:

Canada umbrella sandwich

English muffin traffic signal elementary

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Continue this kinesthetic practice of stress, but with a variety of physical markers

for the stressed syllable: hand raising, head raising, eyebrow raising or rising from

the chair, crouching and standing on tip-toe, etc. Have students volunteer other

vocabulary for this kind of practice.

STRESS ERRORS: In pairs, Student A asks question (a) or (b). Student B

answers. There is immediate feedback if the question was misunderstood.

Question Answer

a. What’s in the dessert? Sugar.

b. What’s in the desert? Sand.

a. Is it elementary? No, it’s advanced.

b. Is it a lemon tree? No, it’s an orange tree.

a. What is an empire? A monarchy

b. What is an umpire? A baseball referee

SCHWA HUNT: To practice vowel reduction, have students read the following

pairs of words and draw a slash through the vowels that are reduced to schwa:

atom atomic

added additional

office official

legal legality

Circle all the vowels that are reduced to schwa in each column.

impose imposition prepare preparation

contrast contrastive pornography pornographic

relate relative reveal revelation

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indicate indicative regal regalia

Circle each vowel which is heard as schwa. Use normal-speed pronunciation.

1. hospitalize

2. reminiscence

3. secretarial

4. distinguish

5. applicable

6. application

7. labyrinth

8. hypodermic

9. extinguish

10. composition

11. tournament

12. extracurricular

13. pictorial

14. bureaucracy

15. bureaucratic

16. phosphorescence

DIALOGUE READING: Read the following dialogue with students. Brainstorm

which words should be stressed by the salesman during his pitch and which should

be stressed during the last part of the dialogue. Practice reading with different

rhythms as well:

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Inside Out – Teacher’s Resource Pack – Photocopiable Material – MacMillan

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CONCLUSION:

Stress and rhythm are crucial in determining the realization of segments,

indicating the morphemic and syntactic function of elements, and structuring

information in the sentence.

Therefore, and given the role they play in the intelligibility, adequacy and

fluency in speech, they should be consistently practiced by foreign learners if

possible since the early stages of their lives or their learning process.

Since native speakers use stress to highlight the most important words in their

message, a rhythmical approach to English pronunciation will help the foreign

listener to focus on the stressed words in the message, thus strengthening the links

between pronunciation and grammatical structure.

The study of stress and rhythm, then, encourages the understanding of

language as communication rather than a set of isolated segments, making it

easier for the student to appreciate the value of the language he is learning.

BIBLIOGRAPHY & REFERENCES

Abercrombie, D. (1964). Syllable quantity and enclitics in English. In D. Abercrombie & al.(eds.), In Honour of Daniel Jones. Longmans: LondonAnderson-Hsieh, Janet. (1989) Approaches Toward Teaching Pronunciation: A Brief History, “Cross Currents”, 16/2Bolinger, Dwight. (1989) Intonation and its uses, Stanford University PressBrown, G. (1977, 1990) Listening to Spoken English. London, LongmanCelce-Murcia, Marianne; Brinton, Donna & Goodwin, Janet. (1996) Teaching Pronunciation: A Reference for Teachers of English as a Second or Foreign Language. Cambridge, MA, Cambridge University Press. Cruttenden, Alan. (1986) Intonation. Cambridge. 1986Crystal, D. (1969) Prosodic Systems and Intonation in English. Cambridge: Cambridge UPCunningham Florez, MaryAnn (1998), Improving Adult ESL Learners’ Pronunciation Skills. Center for Adult English Language Acquisition, http://www.cal.org/caela/esl_resources/digests/Pronun.html.Dalton, C. & B. Seidlhofer.(1994) Pronunciation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dauer, R. M. (1993). Accurate English: A complete course in pronunciation. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc.Morley, Joan. (1991) The Pronunciation Component in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, “TESOL Quarterly” 25/3Patel, A. (2008) Music, language, and the brain. Oxford University Press. Pike, K. (1945) The Intonation of American English. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P.

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